(12-31-2018, 02:56 PM)Firesky Wrote:

(12-31-2018, 02:47 PM)TheO-LineMatters Wrote: I was debating about trading Telvin Smith. He looked bad in pass coverage this season and he's just smaller than I'd like. Can we trade him without taking a cap hit though? If we can, I'd do it and move Jack to WLB and bring in a true MLB with size/speed.

Trade him and take whatever cap hit is left on our books. He's a SS playing WLB, at 215 pounds has been an absolute liability this year. He seems to always be in coverage when we're getting torched over the middle for those short/medium gains. He starts plays flat footed, misses gaps, and overshoots assignments, will outright whiff tackles (see Watson's TD last sunday, and Derrick Henry's runs) All i hear about is our "speed at LB" yet we're constantly getting killed by mobile qb's getting to the edge. Yea he gets a lot of tackles (but so did Kirk Morrison) and like Morrison a lot of his stops come on the wrongside of the Line of Scrimmage. He'll get the occasional defensive score, but that hardly makes up for all the plays missed in the game prior to that.

Myles Jack's "true position" is WLB. I think he'd THRIVE there especially if we draft a thumping middle linebacker to play alongside him. I'd trade Telvin now while teams remember his probowl season last year and think this year is an anomaly; if he has another subpar season he will have 0 trade value and we'll be stuck with a $10 million per year cap hit for a tweener player that isn't living up to his paycheck.

What amazes me is that people are so willing to just move on from Fournette after "one bad year" but completely ignore Telvin (who is THE problem with our LB corps/run defense frankly) and don't want to move on from him after "one bad year" and he has 3x the cap hit that Leonard does.

It's not just that he had a bad year, it's the games missed that bother me. Last season Fournette was knicked up and this year he missed half the season and he had a history of injuries in college. He's only been in the NFL 2 years. That doesn't seem to bode well for the rest of his career. The so called, "bad attitude" doesn't bother me as much. I just think that is Coughlin being Coughlin, but if you have a top 10 pick invested in a RB and he can't stay healthy, what's the point? In my opinion, RB's are only as good as the O-Line and if you have a subpar O-Line, you better have a durable RB. Hopefully we can make this line a lot better in 2019, but I'm not expecting miracles. Most of the starters will be returning from season ending injuries and we'll probably get off to a slow start with that unit. I just can't see Fournette withstanding another beating.

---